This workshop aims to discuss the divide between activists and academics and propose solutions for dealing with this situation. This workshop will be conducted as a roundtable discussion in order to initiate communication with activists who can inform academic inquiry and to explore ways in which academic inquiry can benefit activists. We will explore the ever growing need for academics and activists to understand the relationship between practice, experience, and theory. As members of Students Promoting Engagement through Activism and Knowledge (SPEAK) we consider ourselves to be members of the local community; the community where we work and carry on our daily lives. As such members, we are interested in expanding our involvement in some of the struggles and enterprises of this community and to allow community members to impact the academy.

Roundtable discussions permit lively, informal exchanges that allow participants to discuss strategies for action, new initiatives, and frustrations they have had as academics, activists, academic activist and activist academics. There will be no discussion leaders but members of SPEAK will act as moderators and will be responsible for beginning the discussion on time, staying on topic, summarizing the agreed upon actions, and ending on time. SPEAK moderators will also be responsible for making sure that each person has an opportunity to speak and be heard.

As graduate students in a discipline largely centered on social justice—women’s studies—members of SPEAK are constantly faced with the challenge of pulling theory and practice together. Since this roundtable will be used to envision strategies of working together we will give examples of some of the ways we do this as graduate students in women’s studies. One such way we do this is by doing research that is relevant to our communities and to the movements in which we are engaged. For example, one member of SPEAK is doing a master’s thesis on how hip hop videos impact adolescent young black girls and has implemented a Sister Circle for these girls to participate in even after the project is complete. These Sister Circles will be forums for teenage girls to come together to talk about any concerns or issues that they are facing in their daily lives. This will be a means to support one another in a non-threatening way and allows her research to be both academic and activist.

We are interested in models and strategies of organizing both in and out of the academy and in joint efforts between activists, scholars and oppressed communities. Workshop participants will envision ways to address the problems of and potential for collaboration between scholars, activists and neighbors in effecting positive social transformation. In doing this we will help in the building and maintenance of social justice movements and will be “envisioning alternatives” in which “Another World is Possible.”